Jacen Solo is a very bad man.  What started as a series of calculated steps down the Dark Side ladder has escalated into a full-scale freefall.  After the burning of the forests of Kashyyyk, his torture of Ben Skywalker, and his attack on the Millennium Falcon there is only person left in the galaxy who loves him… his young daughter, Allana, currently in the custody of his jaded lover, Tenel Ka.

Desperate for the affection he once held, Jacen makes a desperate bid to keep close the last thing in the galaxy he holds dear.

Fury, as is appropriate to the title, focuses on Jacen’s slide into irrational rage as the Dark Side of the Force begins to cloud and shift the noble ideals that initiated his fall to darkness.  In the beginning of the series he used his power in subtle ways, making surgical strikes to upset the balance of power in his favor, maintaining the mantra that his actions were for the betterment of the galaxy.  Now he seems to be crumbling under the division of his attention between winning a galactic civil and keeping his daughter safe, using his power less like a scalpel and more like a club.

Meanwhile, Luke is still reeling from the loss of his wife and the dark tendencies beginning to emerge in his son, Ben.  Unable to cope with his emotional turmoil, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order grows more and more reserved, refusing to take an active role in the activities of the Jedi, effectively leaving them leaderless.  The resultant confrontation between Luke and Ben is one of the high points of the novel with its resonant ruminations on the dangers of attachment and why it had been forbidden by the previous generation of Jedi.

The last major thread of the novel follows the remainder of the Solo clan along with Zekk and Jagged Fel as they track down notorious loose thread Alema Rar.  Alema, a horribly disfigured Twi-Lek Dark Jedi, has been perfecting the art of creating Force phantoms, a skill once employed by Jacen’s last mentor Lumiya.  This confrontation, which spans almost a quarter of the novel, concludes with a bang: the story-arc of a character that has been little more than a splinter in the side of our heroes.

At times Fury seems to suffer the same fate as its main antagonist – a divided attention.  With so many characters to focus on already, it seems odd that author Aaron Allston would break away from the action the focus on obscure characters like Denjax Teppler, a Confederation politician, or Dician, an entirely new character who serves little purpose in the grand scheme of things.  Such things are probably the product of writing by committee.

All things considered, Fury is a worthy continuation of the Legacy of the Force story arc.  It succeeds in pushing the overarching plot further to the boiling point while maintaining enough of its own character, particularly in furthering the character of Jaina Solo and her destiny as the Sword of the Jedi.  I eagerly await the next (and second to last) installment of the series by Karen Traviss, a novel which is finally justified in her focus on Boba Fett and the Mandalorians.  February can’t come soon enough.
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